


A House Divided

by Medie



Category: Stargate: SG1
Genre: Apocalypse, Community: apocalyptothon, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We make everyone nervous," Carolyn laughs bitterly. "Have you seen the body count, Sam? There's a good reason."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A House Divided

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to [](http://lovellama.livejournal.com/profile)[**lovellama**](http://lovellama.livejournal.com/) for the beta and [](http://azarsuerte.livejournal.com/profile)[**azarsuerte**](http://azarsuerte.livejournal.com/) for the read-through.

The world ends on a Thursday.

*

The day before, Wednesday, is a perfect crisp, cool day. Movie perfect. The last of winter hanging in the frosty air, tempered by the warm promise of spring, calling to come out and play.

Answering the call, Sam goes for a run. When she gets back, she hits the coffee and goes to wake Carolyn with a nudge and a kiss. She's a morning person. Carolyn's not. Her answer is a muttered curse and an attempt to hide beneath the blankets.

Sam laughs, sliding into bed with her. Her skin is sweaty from her run, cool from the wind dogging every step. Wrapping an arm around Carolyn's waist, she hugs close. "Spend the day with me," she whispers into the sleep-warm skin of Carolyn's neck.

"Sam..." Carolyn starts to protest, but Sam skims fingers down her arms, hips rocking forward.

"Come on," she says. "It's the first day off we've had in weeks. Let's _do something_."

She murmurs pleas and promises into Carolyn's skin, her lips coaxing when the content of her words fail.

It's not long before they're on Sam's bike, Carolyn's cheek pressed between her shoulder blades, speeding out of town.

*

Thursday morning, they wake up to the apocalypse. The news is shrieking about a storm in the Atlantic, crop failures, and natural disasters striking on a global scale.

Sam's biting into her toast when the news cuts to a shot of Manhattan, skyscrapers listing violently in the hurricane force winds and her cellphone rings.

She answers when she hears the echo of Carolyn's as well. "I'm on my way in."

*

"Has to be the Ori," someone says.

"No shit, Sherlock," says someone else. Sam's listening to a conference call. Generals O'Neill and Landry, the Pentagon, the IOA. It's one big clusterfuck waiting to happen.

She looks across the table at Walter. He ducks in the door, rounding the desk, leaning over to murmur, "We're unable to raise the rest of SG1."

Sam grits her teeth. "Keep trying," she says, just as quiet.

*

They find nothing. Literally nothing. The planet SG1 had been on is a wasteland. Nothing but desert and the dead.

SG1 isn't among them.

*

Communications goes down in the middle of the night. The power grid follows two hours later.

By the time the sun rises, it's too late.

*

There's a cache of survivors in Manhattan. Carolyn's not surprised, but Sam is. She looks at the ruined buildings, remembering the hurricane that had leveled the city. Category 3 would have been enough to do it. The Ori-fueled storm had been a hundred times stronger than that. The city's so much wreckage, ruined concrete and twisted steel.

"I still can't believe it," Sam says, when the chopper's blades have stopped. "There's nothing left."

Beside her, Carolyn blows a hair out of her face. "There's always something." She shoulders her bag, checks her gun, and moves forward. "Come on."

Sam falls into step with her, comfortable with the routine. That's the biggest surprise of all this. The apocalypse is boring.

*

Plague burns its way through Detroit. Not the first one. Something different. Meaner. Hemorrhagic. Sam walks through hospital ward after hospital ward, gowned to the hilt, watching Carolyn examine patients and shake her head.

They try everything. Nothing works. The city will be a ghost town by dawn, populated with a shadow of its usual bustle.

In the end, all Sam can do is supervise containment while Carolyn attends the dying.

"No one asks," a marine says. "Storms, droughts, plagues, meteor strikes...it's fucking biblical and _nobody_ asks. Nobody's saying anything anymore."

"There's nothing to say," Sam replies. "Answers don't matter. The questions are obsolete." She tips her head back, watching the acrid smoke of burning bodies fill the sky.

"Come on," she says, turning around. "Dr. Lam will have more bodies waiting."

*

SG teams fan out across the globe. England. France. Russia. The Ori hit list. Sam ends up coordinating the missions.

There's no one else. DC is a smoking crater.

"If there's anyone else, ma'am," Walter says, "they're not answering."

Sam slumps in General Landry's chair and closes her eyes. "I don't blame them." She holds out a hand. "What's next?"

*

 

Sam sneaks into SG1's locker room, pressing her head against the closed door. She'd cry if she dared waste the tears.

"The Tok'ra are here."

Carolyn's sitting on the bench. She's had a shower. Her hair's still slick against her skin. She makes notes on a file. Her pen stops scratching as she looks up.

"They brought the supplies."

Naquadah for a proposed power grid. Power's been intermittent. Without it, their hands are tied.

"Good," Sam says, scrubbing hands through her hair. She's exhausted. She hasn't slept in days. She opens her locker, facing herself in the small mirror. Dark shadows, sallow skin, eyes heavy with exhaustion. "My grime has grime."

"Good news on that front," Carolyn says as she takes off her glasses. "Siler got the reclaim system working." She nods at the showers. "You've got five minutes."

Sam doesn't waste a second. The water's almost cold, barely a dribble out of the tap, but it's heaven. She closes her eyes and lets it wash down over her.

"I talked to Malek." Carolyn says from the doorway. "There's still no sign of them."

Pressing her lips together, Sam holds out a hand. Carolyn pushes the shampoo into it. Four minutes left.

"They'll come back," she says, rinsing her hair.

"I know."

*

They get a signal from Beijing. Weak, scratchy, but real.

Walter passes his earpiece to Satterfield. "Ambassador Chen," she says, after a moment. "I think." Scrunching her nose, she listens. "Massive flooding. Mudslides. There's not much left of the city, ma'am. Probably not much more of the country. She's asking for help."

Sam nods. Who isn't? "Odyssey's maxed." She looks at Walter.

"Daedalus just got in," he says.

"See what they can do." Sam turns away.

*

They find General Landry's plane on the American side of the border.

"A few miles the other way and he would have made it," Carolyn says, dry-eyed as she touches her father's face.

Sam opens her mouth. She wants to say they don't know that. That the Ori struck at everyone.

She can't.

"We should get back," she says. "We're making the Canadians nervous."

"We make everyone nervous," Carolyn laughs bitterly. "Have you seen the body count, Sam? There's a good reason."

*

Sam gets her generators up and running. The Mountain and the city around it come to life.

"You should be excited," Carolyn says over stale bread and instant coffee. "It's something _good_."

Sam smiles, hollow and empty. "It'll mean more refugees." And no food to feed them. The fertile fields of America's heartland are no more. Dried up dust bowls have replaced them.

Carolyn looks past her at the Stargate. "We have options."

"Except no one will trade with us." Most of the worlds beyond the gate are Ori-controlled or in the process of falling. "The Priors have seen to that."

Carolyn shrugs. "Who says we have to ask them?"

*

They lose a team their first time out. Almost lose the second.

The third comes back successful.

"There's a resistance," Cadman says, letting Carolyn bandage her arm. "They're going to try and help." Her smile is grim. "We're all they've got."

Sam nods. She turns to go, but Laura's voice stops her cold. "Colonel, there's something else."

*

Vala smiles, perky and cheerful, when she comes through the Gate. Or, she would, if her face weren't a mass of blood and bruises. "It seems," she says, thick and weak, "the Priors are holding a grudge."

*

"Daniel?" Sam asks when Vala's able to talk.

Vala looks away. Her smile dims. "I don't know what happened to him. There was a commotion -- " She presses her lips together. "I think he might have ascended."

"He did," Sam says. She tries to smile. "How else would we have found you?"

"Yes, precisely," Vala says.

*

Sam doesn't ask about Cameron and Teal'c. "I can't," she says, sitting in a ball on their bed. She turns her head, looking at Carolyn's agonized face. "If they're -- "

"They're not," Carolyn says. "Vala doesn't think they were held in the city. There's a chance that they weren't captured." She leans in, pressing her forehead against Sam's. "They're alive, Sam."

"I know," Sam says.

Her phone rings. Another jury-rigged service. Sam picks it up. Her breath stutters as she answers and she inhales slowly, trying to even it out. When the call's done, she drops it again.

"We have to go. They need us."


End file.
